Tavern of the Blue Hand

Top 20 muds

I've decided to go ahead and not allow incentives and rewards to be given to players for voting. Here is the new entry in the Rules section:

Quote:

Originally Posted by

You CANNOT offer incentives or rewards to players for voting. That means you cannot give players items, experience, or anything else in return for votes. You CAN offer a game-wide prize (e.g. for ALL players on your mud) for reaching a goal, such as getting your mud the top 20, finishing in the top 10, etc.

Obviously, the majority of the community here at TMS is against the idea of offering rewards for voting, and this site is here for what's best for everyone as a whole. While offering rewards might increase traffic to a degree, I think restricting rewards will also increase traffic as more muds will activately try to get a better ranking on the list.

Notice that I still allow awards to ALL players for a goal. For example, you can tell your players that if your mud is in the top 10 at reset time, you'll reward them by opening up a new area, giving them all 1000xp, having a festival day on the mud, etc. This reward must be given to ALL players on the mud - not just the ones that voted.

This rule will begin to be enforced starting Monday, January 16th. Please continue to discuss the issue, your thoughts on this rule change, suggestions, etc. Nothing is ever etched in stone.

I'm not so sure that it's a zero-sum game like that =). For a mud on the list to benefit the other muds on this list, I think we can all agree that a player needs to come from that mud and find another mud here.

It is mostly a zero-sum game, actually. From an economic standpoint, if we view players as units of wealth, the only creation of wealth comes from players new to MUDding. Now, let's say that TMS creates 50 new units of wealth (attracts 50 new people to MUDding) per month. The most any other given MUD can gain per month without drawing directly from another is the amount of wealth created every month. Even this can be viewed as denying income to other MUDs that would otherwise have gotten those players.

It's simple, really. New members to the list do not facilitate more creation of wealth (unless they start buying TMS adspace on mpogd or something), therefore unless they draw exactly 0 players, or run at a net loss, they are further dividing the resources of the site.

Obviously, the majority of the community here at TMS is against the idea of offering rewards for voting, and this site is here for what's best for everyone as a whole.

The majority meaning the vocal majority I assume. A dozen out of the 1000+ registered is not quite a majority. A dozen plus the board owner is a vast majority though - -, so I do hope that everyone supports any final decison. What concerns me, and the primary reason I even joined into the thread is the thought of trying to control how people run their mud. Will the complaints about one muds use of incentives that altered how the rankings fell, turn into complaints that another mud uses ingame announcements or other zealous attempts to make the pbase vote? Is it at all a concern that some muds may choose not to sign-up for the listing with restrictions placed on the way their mud is ran? ( Please pardon me if the questions seem over-dramatic, I tend to go that route when I play devil's advocate. ) My hats off to you for being proactive in trying fix what some see as a problem.

Pertaining to previous posts:
Mason:

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Originally Posted by

I would like to echo the sentiments of those who suggest the community is disappearing. I always liked this place as a resource and as a vehicle for interesting debates about MUDs. However, once this place became a mere "banner exchange," I lost most of my respect for this site.

Threshold:

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Originally Posted by

The lack of quality, substantive discussions in the forums is a very good indicator of this.

Molly:

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Originally Posted by

This site used to be a great place, with interesting discussions and articles to read.

Has the depth of the discussions really gone downhill all that much? Does anyone miss discussions on sock-color or is this post or is this post not spam? TMS has been around long enough now that the same discussions have been rehashed so many times that many people now have nothing new to talk about. There have been about as many interesting new advanced concepts brought up in the last few months as there were in the few months preceeding Achaea's and DR's arrival.

The only thing, barring a major event in mudding, that is left for people to discuss is the meta-game of mudding ( how to promote, how to deal with twinkish players, etc) and ethics. Both of those topics are unanswerable and incite flamewars which is why they will always be around. You shouldnt need anymore evidence than to look around at the other mud-based forums to see that all of them are going through the same stages. I truely do not believe it has anything to do with how the list was maintained.

Terloch:

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Originally Posted by

I have to agree with a lot of people, my interest (and my players interest) in here is waining. People don't care as much to vote knowing that there's no way in bloody #### they can compete with large commercial muds with huge playerbases which give in-character incentives for clicking on a few links.

Were people more inspired that they could overtake RoD during it's heyday at the top of the list? It was assumed that no matter what the current situation was at the #1 ranking, by the end of the session RoD would be there again. Perhaps the flaw in the incentive promotion was that it should have only kicked in the last week or so of the process and let other muds have their few days in the sun.

Molly:

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Originally Posted by

There is a distinct difference between REAL traffic – people who come here to actually view the list and to take active part in the site, and those who just click a vote button to get some extra experience points in a mud. The latter don’t contribute to discussion threads or submit articles. Like the owner of Achaea, they are only interested in one thing – to get immediate advantages for themselves.

This makes the very difficult assumption that people who are not drawn here through incentives are REAL traffic. Like the owner of Achaea, the first reason they come here is to promote their mud. The link is to vote for this mud at Top Mud Sites, not join a mud community. Those people have the same chance of catching on and becoming members as those who come through incentives.

Sorry for jumping through so many topics at once. Here's hoping for the best.

I've decided to go ahead and not allow incentives and rewards to be given to players for voting. Here is the new entry in the Rules section:

Quote:

Originally Posted by

You CANNOT offer incentives or rewards to players for voting. That means you cannot give players items, experience, or anything else in return for votes. You CAN offer a game-wide prize (e.g. for ALL players on your mud) for reaching a goal, such as getting your mud the top 20, finishing in the top 10, etc.

WOW!

This is excellent news. Thank you Synozeer for being so responsive to the users/readers here!

I can hardly put into words how PLEASANTLY surprised I was when I read this post!

It is mostly a zero-sum game, actually. From an economic standpoint, if we view players as units of wealth, the only creation of wealth comes from players new to MUDding.

The creation of new units would come by one of two ways:
1) A new player gets his start on a mud.
2) An existing player finds a mud that he likes and plays it in addition to his other muds.

These two factors are both influenced by the muds at which the player is currently playing. I don't know of any existing surveys that can quantify either of these factors enough to make a decision on this matter. While I would agree that there would be some "loss" (where loss is often defined in this case as failure to gain, which is usually something else entirely) to some people, I disagree that there is no benefit as well. I think that deciding either way without much quantitive evidence is unwise =).

For anyone who hadnt noticed, the Top 20 list has been cleaned up considerably of people that 'shouldnt' be there.

Those two 1000+ character ones... Gemstone, and DragonRealms (owned by the same company) were finally removed because I think they realized they didnt NEED the exposure from a small, free site of more grassroots players. I could understand them vying for spots on the Mudconnector, but here, it was just like stomping down people's confidence.

So I think the top 20 now is pretty fair. Achaea, the other big pay-to-play, is actually only optional. You can play the game fine for free. But many of the characters take pride in spending their cash on OPTIONAL things to benefit their characters, like training sessions, items, houses, etc. Now this does add a realm of seeming unfairness.
-But here's the kicker, unless your a big bad powergamer and have this urge to be stronger and better then everyone so you can eventually kill them all, you will really have no need more then the skills you can get for free. It makes a perfectly strong character.-

Even Dragon's Gate looked to be off the list. It was a smaller pay-to-play, but still didnt belong here. If your going to charge people to play, then advertise on something that charges you. Thats my opinion anyways.

And yes there are a few in the Top 20 that still dont belong. I saw that the Mudconnector website was actually in the MUD listing top 20 last week. Thought that was kinda silly.

thats all
jenred

<<Those two 1000+ character ones... Gemstone, and DragonRealms (owned by the same company) were finally removed because I think they realized they didnt NEED the exposure from a small, free site of more grassroots players.>>

Actually, our info was just lost in the crash Adam had. We weren't "removed" at all.

I for one am glad Adam made the decision to make this change. Nothing should be done in haste and I'm glad that after all the discussions and opinions were presented, he weighed the pros and cons and made the call.

(and it's good to be back on the front page, too! no more crashes and corrupt databases, please!

The creation of new units would come by one of two ways:
1) A new player gets his start on a mud.
2) An existing player finds a mud that he likes and plays it in addition to his other muds.

This is still zero sum. A player that plays two MUDs is not worth as much as two players who each play one MUD. A player, or, mor specifically, a player's time is a finite resource that does not increase in value when spread across multiple recipients. If the hypothetical player allocates half of his resources to another MUD, the first MUD loses that amount of resources, and the net change is zero.

As for losing wealth vs. not gaining, I agree that they are significantly different. I was merely pointing out that unless Mihaly's MUD was running a net loss, it was having a negative impact on the rest of the list. The only way it could have a positive impact while running a net gain would be if his MUD listing generated more new wealth than it consumed. A new MUD listing, however, has no effect on the amount of new wealth generated by TMS, therefore his MUD listing was most definitely negatively impacting the rest of the list.

Just to preemptively clear up any possible confusion, please note that I'm not saying that a negative impact on the rest of the list is in any way out of line. It is, in fact, the whole point of putting your MUD on the list. I only had a problem with Mihaly trying to claim that his listing was somehow benefitting everyone else, and that his abuses were amplifying said claimed benefits.

The creation of new units would come by one of two ways:
1) A new player gets his start on a mud.
2) An existing player finds a mud that he likes and plays it in addition to his other muds.

Quote:

Originally Posted by (thelenian @ bar)

This is still zero sum. A player that plays two MUDs is not worth as much as two players who each play one MUD. A player, or, mor specifically, a player's time is a finite resource that does not increase in value when spread across multiple recipients. If the hypothetical player allocates half of his resources to another MUD, the first MUD loses that amount of resources, and the net change is zero.

While you are correct in stating that a player's time is a finite resource that does not increase, there is an important implication that does not follow from this fact. This implication is that a player's time allocation is fixed with regards to playing a mud. One can disprove of this fairly easily with a hypothetical situation: If I usually spend one hour a day reading a book, but I find a mud that I enjoy, I may spend that same hour playing the mud instead. In this case the net time allocation overall is zero, but the net time allocation spent playing muds has increased. The same logic applies to new players starting on a mud, only in a more exaggerated manner.

Quote:

Originally Posted by (thelenian @ baz)

The only way it could have a positive impact while running a net gain would be if his MUD listing generated more new wealth than it consumed. A new MUD listing, however, has no effect on the amount of new wealth generated by TMS, therefore his MUD listing was most definitely negatively impacting the rest of the list.

The underlined conditional is a key point, and the assertion following immediately after it is not correct without its truth. Like I said in my last post though, I know of no surveys that can answer this question.

Like I said in my last post though, I know of no surveys that can answer this question.

That can be answered fairly easily, without any survey.

A new listing does not affect TMS's generation of wealth in any manner whatsoever, therefore the question of whether or not a new MUD making a net gain from a TMS listing negatively impacts the rest of the members of the list is easily answered by a simple yes. A new listing only affects the reallocation of existing resources, and/or the allocation of new wealth generated by TMS.

Players that come to TMS from a mud on the listing and end up playing another are a net zero change in wealth. Only players new to MUDding, and/or come from outside the list represent a net gain. As those players by definition do not come from listed members, whether or not a given MUD is on the list has no effect on the wealth generated by TMS.

A new listing does not affect TMS's generation of wealth in any manner whatsoever...(snip)...Players that come to TMS from a mud on the listing and end up playing another are a net zero change in wealth.

I addressed this in my previous post ;). There would be a net gain if that player allocated time that was previously unallocated for mudding to a new mud found on the list.

Most of the people that play on Ages of Despair are so busy playing they forget to vote.

That is the case for EVERY mud.

It always makes me chuckle when people trot out this argument, as if to say "our mud is MORE FUN that the muds ranked higher than us, because the players of those muds are only voting because they have so much free time due to their mud not being as much fun."

Considering the fact that voting takes about 5 seconds, I find it difficult to believe that any game of any type could be so incredibly amazing that one just couldn't bear to rip themself away for 5 seconds to vote.

Most of the people that play on Ages of Despair are so busy playing they forget to vote.

That is the case for EVERY mud.

Likely quite true and sadly true at that. There is bound to be some variation though. Without knowing how many vote compared to the total player base, it is hard to quantify the degree of validity of the statement. And even if you could, it can't tell you if only having 1% of the players voting is a result of appathy or forgetfulness. All I or you can express is our perception of what is the case on the muds we play.

I do wish there was an easier (and faster) way to retrieve the current stats on the list though. Everytime I run the script to grab our muds status and announce it over channels it freezes my mud client for about 30-40 second. lol

I addressed this in my previous post . There would be a net gain if that player allocated time that was previously unallocated for mudding to a new mud found on the list.

True, but I strongly suspect, based on statistics for MMORPGs, that show that players will spend around 75% of their time playing a single character*, that such a gain would be marginal at best.

*Note: 75% on a single character, when you have multiple characters in the same game. I suspect that the ratio of primary char time/secondary chars times is even higher when spread across multiple games, but, of course, that is just a plausible extrapolation based on anecdotal evidence.

I can't honestly say I enjoyed any of the top 50 MU*'s, much less the top 20. I agree with whoever said that most of them cheat. I really don't care that they cheat, however, and they are not bad MU*s (well, some aren't), but mainly, they just failed to catch my interest.

Its been awhile since I have had the opportunity to visit. I am both amused and saddened to find the same issue being tossed about.

What amuses me is that I read so many of Achaea's justifications for their reward system and assumed that its owner's arguments were opinions not contrary to facts. I admit my chagrin upon actually reading TMS rules and seeing this:

Quote:

Originally Posted by

Can I offer rewards for voting?
You CANNOT offer incentives or rewards to players for voting. That means you cannot give players items, experience, or anything else in return for votes.

Apparently, Synozeer has no desire to enforce the rules he has put in place; I understand the tediousness of policing all the muds wishing to advertise here and it is, after all, his site.

Achaea has some very interesting features that are not standard; for this, I salute them. I will not mention what I feel are weaknesses in the mud and the way it promotes itself as there are plenty of posts on that subject.

It's simple. If you see a mud cheating by offering rewards for votes, report it to me with all the facts and I'll look right into it. I'm not going to log into every mud on a regular basis and hope to catch a reward emote.